


what the water gave me

by girlsarewolves



Series: in every lifetime [3]
Category: Skinwalkers (2006)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Blood, Character Study, Dark Fantasy, F/M, Gen, Homicidal Thoughts, Horror, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Isolation, Macabre, Masturbation, Menstruation, Mental Instability, Morbid, Murder, Period Piece, binding, female character pretends to be a man, finfolk, heavily influenced by the film Cold Skin (but without rape), maybe? - Freeform, slight dysphoria, thoughts of self harm
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-25
Updated: 2020-06-25
Packaged: 2021-03-03 22:55:01
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,126
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24903406
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/girlsarewolves/pseuds/girlsarewolves
Summary: There is a freedom to the exhausting, repetition of her new life. She never speaks, but sometimes she screams just to hear the sound or feel the burn of it in her lungs and throat. Some days she even laughs.There are some nights, rare nights, that she cries.
Relationships: Sonja/Varek | Caleb
Series: in every lifetime [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/112957
Comments: 1
Kudos: 2





	what the water gave me

**Author's Note:**

  * For [TheYearOfTheWolf](https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheYearOfTheWolf/gifts).



> happy birthday to my husband who is fortunately just as obsessed with these characters as I am :) love ya, babe.

* * *

She cuts her hair short, close to the scalp. Binds down her breasts. Pulls the thick, oversized coat around her so that it hides just how slight her frame is, the empty space between her legs where the trousers have too much room. Pulls the snug cap over her boyish, new hair style so that it covers her ears and wraps a scarf around her neck, bundled up so it obscures her jaw from view. Last comes the gloves, and then she’s ready. 

The lack of weathering to her skin still makes her look too young to convincingly pass as her father, and the shape of her eyes might give them pause, but she knows the types who come to collect the poor souls who are heading out to isolation. They don’t look all that closely, don’t really care who you are so long as you don’t give them trouble and let them carry out their duties.

Sonja has no intention of giving them any reason to spare her a second glance.

By the time anyone comes to the shack of a house where her father had kept her all but prisoner and planned to abandon her, he’ll stink worse than the scent of gutted fish that all but chokes her as she waits at the docks. They’ll find the body in the tub, the slit wrists and the black-red blood spilled down the sides of the porcelain, and never know about the laudanum she laced his ale with.

It will be a quiet burial. No funeral. There’s no one left to attend. They’ll put his name in the obituary, perhaps even mention his late wife. No next of kin to notify, exactly as her father had wanted.

When Sonja boards the ship that will take her to her father’s designated post, she watches their small house fade into the fob. For the first time in years, she smiles.

* * *

The lighthouse towers along a barren coast. Once painted a pristine white, weather and salt and the local gulls have left their marks. The previous keeper is a withered, old man. Scraggly beard and wiry arms and round belly. He barely looks at her as he hands the keys and a leather-bound journal of instructions on crinkly paper.

She takes both and watches as the crewmen who’d come to shore with her and the captain carry up the few supplies mandated to accompany her and get her through till the next ship arrives. It’s easier here on land to ignore the suspicious, prying glances from the captain, or the scrutinizing looks that get under her skin from the sailors.

They will be gone soon. Swallowed up by the misty horizon much like her old prison. This new isolation is a welcome one. It extends as far as the eye can see and even climbs high up towards the new rumbling sky.

Sonja is ready for it.

“There’s food and drink, and supplies to help you get more of each should you run out before the ship with replenishments comes through,” the captain tells her after the previous keeper and the crew have returned to the lifeboat. “There’s also a rifle and ammunition in case of any emergency,” he adds in a hushed and grave tone. He gives her a hard look, his storm-gray eyes on hers making it clear that he knows. He might not know the details, but he knows enough.

She wonders if he is offering her an out, or merely the promise of a secret kept safe. She trusts neither, and merely nods.

The captain stares at her a moment longer before giving a sharp nod of his head and turning away. He does not look back at her as he leaves, as the sailors row the boat back to the ship. Only the previous keep spares her a parting glance.

Sonja stands there and watches until they are back to the ship. She remains still, silent as her father’s body in the tub where she left him, until the ship sails away into the distance, far out of her sight.

Gloved fingers pull away the scarf from her face, and for no one but the seagulls to see, she smiles.

* * *

It is more work than she expected to take care of the lighthouse, and keep its light burning each night and some particularly green-gray, stormy days. 

Sonja feels the burn of all her chores throughout her days, and the ache in her bones at night. She relishes it in a way she can’t remember relishing anything since losing her mother’s gentle hums and quiet smiles. She bears the cold with a stubborn determination that made her the bane of her father’s life, and sometimes lets the candle flame burn her fingers a moment too long before snuffing out the light.

There is a freedom to the exhausting, repetition of her new life. She never speaks, but sometimes she screams just to hear the sound or feel the burn of it in her lungs and throat. Some days she even laughs.

There are some nights, rare nights, that she cries.

Her only company so far has been the gulls and the seals that bask in the hazy sunlight that offers little warmth against the constant cold. She studies them during moments of rest. Wonders how easy it would be to snap a gull’s neck, or how difficult it would be to take down a seal. She’s curious if the meat would taste any better than the fish and dried meats and stale breads she’s used to.

Maybe part of her just wants to watch the blood wash off her pale fingers in the seawater. Sometimes she wishes her father had been awake. Sometimes she wishes she could have heard him scream. Sonja wonders if the other gulls would scream or if the other seals would waddle fast towards the crashing waves if she killed one of them.

At night she burrows under scratchy blankets and presses her hand between her legs and thinks of blood dripping into water and swirling, thinning out until it’s pink. She doesn’t make any sound when she comes.

But she goes to sleep smiling.

* * *

It is roughly a month into her new life when she feels the stare of something meaner and smarter than ornery birds and blubbery sea life. It feels not wholly unlike the hard, hungry looks of the sailors, or the cruel glares from her father’s too sober eyes.

It makes her feel small. Like prey, before the jaws of the predator tear deep into flesh and bone and snap until there’s no life left.

Sonja looks out into the too calm waters and sees a humanoid head hover above the surface. If not for the fear, she would laugh and embrace the insanity that so many had warned would come from the isolation of this life. But as much as she doubts her own senses, she cannot shake the fear freezing her faster than the unforgiving weather she’s already used to.

The rifle is exactly where she found it and left it. Her fingers do not shake as she loads it.

When she rushes back out, rifle in hand, the head is gone. The fear remains. Lingers like the heavy weight in the air before a storm, despite the perfect, blue sky of the day. She keeps the rifle near her, even when she settles in for sleep. She doesn’t touch herself.

There is no smile on her lips tonight.

* * *

Sonja chalks it up to merely the insanity that her father had talked about, that others had warned her of, that waited for those stationed at keeps in such isolation. She tells herself that she should have known it would come with fear. Everything comes with fear, and she has grown too complacent out in this wide, open space.

She looks for the head but sees nothing. Sometimes she almost feels that familiar sensation of being watched, but there’s nothing in the choppy waters today. Even the beach is empty of sunbathers, though the gulls are loud and aggravated as rain beats down.

The sunshine never lasts.

When she curls up in her blankets, on the lump cot that others had called their bed, and presses her fingers to her cunt, she doesn’t think of blood in bath water. She thinks of sharp teeth tearing into her, ripping out her insides and all her secrets. This time she cries out when she comes, panting hard long after the orgasm winds down.

She tries to cry but there’s nothing.

* * *

It is two months after her new life started when the bleeding comes. The sight of blood on her sheets and thighs surprises her at first, and then she laughs at herself for thinking that this wouldn’t be part of her new life. Some things will always remain.

Her hair is fuller now, but choppy and barely comes past her ears. Her body has shed all of its baby fat, and there is a firmness to her that she had thought only some men possessed. But she’s still a woman, still bleeds and feels the sharp pain of her body punishing her for not bearing a child.

Something morbid in her brings her to her feet, and she leaves the darkness of the lighthouse to the hazy, gray light of another day wearing nothing but her skin. Blood is trailing down her legs as her feet pad across the sharp rock of the shore until they sink into wet sand. She stops when muddy-white foam washes over her toes and floods past her ankles. Can only stare as thick drops of blood hit the seafoam and swirl past into the clearer water before the wave slides back out, taking the scent of her into the dark, stormy depths of the ocean.

She remembers the fear. Takes another step. And another, until she’s wading in past waves that rise to her breasts, until she’s far enough out that she lets herself be pulled under. Closes her eyes tight and succumbs to the drag of the Atlantic, thinks of the blackness of a shark’s eyes and the head watching her from a distance, and remembers screaming in pleasure at the thought of being ripped apart and consumed.

Arms snake around her. Both smooth and scaled and cool to the touch. A chest presses into her back, and she feels herself being carried until her head is pulled above water and her mouth gapes open to swallow down air. 

Salt stings her eyes but she has to see, has to know what shape her madness has conjured up to keep her company. Dark hair and dark eyes and a mouth full of sharp teeth, skin shimmering in the light like the shiny silver of an ungutted tuna. 

Sonja stares at her too human predator and feels that same fear from before. She’s bleeding heavily into the ocean. She aches. She doesn’t say a word as he holds her head above the waves, just lets him turn her around so they’re chest to chest. Those black eyes keep staring at her. She swears she feels something slithering between her legs. There are webbed hands on her back, tipped with sharp claws.

Part of her wonders what it would feel like if he dug them in and just ripped down. Reach in and feel her spine.

“I thought of you,” she whispers. Her voice is soft and foreign to her own ears. She sounds like her mother. “I thought of you eating me.”

It - the creature - _he_ \- smiles.

* * *

When the ship arrives with fresh supplies to get her through until the next keep arrives, it is the same captain from before.

Sonja waits at the shore, where rock gives way to sand. Her hair is at her shoulders, and she wears it down. There is no binding underneath her shirt. She sees the hungry looks in the eyes of the crew that come along, open and vicious now that she’s no longer hiding. She takes in the uncertainty in the captain’s gaze as he steps forward.

“Why?” he asks. There’s more, that much is obvious on his face, but it all hangs unspoken and heavy with that one word.

Sonja pulls the dagger from her coat and slices his throat. Savors the way shock gives way to pain gives way to fear gives way to that single word as the man falls to his knees, blood flowing freely and staining his clothes. She looks past him to watch her lover and his kind emerge from the too calm water and tear into the sailors before they can avenge their fallen captain.

“Why not?”

Sonja licks the blood from the blade. And smiles.

* * *

**Author's Note:**

> I know, I know, cliche title - but it just fit.


End file.
